Here a roundup of today's reviews and articles:

ASRock Z370M Pro4 Review
Ballistix Sport AT Gaming DDR4-3000 (TUF Edition) Review
Cooler Master CK552 Gaming Keyboard Review
Deepcool Gamerstorm Castle 240 RGB AIO Review
GeForce RTX on Your Laptop? What Form Will That Take and When?
Gigabyte UD PRO 512GB Solid State Drive Review
Intel Core i7-8086K Anniversary Limited Edition, 5 GHz, 6 Core, 12 Thread Processor Review
QR Codes Explained
VMware Workstation 14 - Expansive and expensive

ASRock Z370M Pro4 Review

ASRock’s Z370M Pro4 brings us the lowest price yet on Intel’s top LGA-1151 chipset. Can it perform, can it overclock, and what features does it give up?

Enthusiasts seeking the biggest bang for their performance buck now have an overclockable Z370 motherboard option for about the same price as the locked-down H370. But there are a few catches, beginning with overclocking limits that are imposed by a thermal-throttling voltage regulator, extending to the board’s lack of CPU PCIe bifurcation, and ending with the lack of USB 3.1 Gen 2 capability. That last feature is integrated into the newer H370 chipset, but the extra chip required to extend the feature to Z370 was, apparently, simply too expensive to include at this price level.

Read full article @ Tom's Hardware

Ballistix Sport AT Gaming DDR4-3000 (TUF Edition) Review

Not to be left out, we've got Ballistix's take on the TUF Gaming Alliance memory. These Gaming-grade DDR4 sticks come in varying speeds and capacities catering to entry-level gamers and enthusiasts alike. Although we've got the TUF Gaming Alliance version here today, other visual designs to match other motherboards are on the way, making these sticks a great option for those looking for a bit more in performance, but still with a focus on price.

Read full article @ TechPowerUp

Cooler Master CK552 Gaming Keyboard Review

Let's face it, the world of mechanical gaming keyboards has been over-saturated for quite a while now.  It makes choosing a keyboard these days quite hard and just a lengthy process.  While many companies have gone over the top with lights and other gimmicks many of us just want a solid keyboard that performs.  Cooler Master thinks their new CK552 is the answer, as their tagline for the keyboard is "No-nonsense, no-compromise".  This full-size gaming keyboard features Gateron mechanical key switches, RGB backlighting, and a pretty simple design that will look great on any desk or setup.  What's even better is the price at only $86.99 at our favorite online retailer.  That price makes it very attractive, especially for gamers who want to put as much money as they can into their graphics card, memory, etc.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

Deepcool Gamerstorm Castle 240 RGB AIO Review

Today, we are reviewing the new Deepcool Gamerstorm Castle 240 RGB AIO. This is the latest AIO cooler from this Beijing company known for their specialization in water-cooled and illuminated cases for the PC enthusiast. There’s also a 280 mm version available, but we received the 240 mm one. RGB has become one of the most important factors currently accentuated by manufacturers. There’s even an RGB 24-pin cable, right? Castle 240 RGB uses a very popular All-in-One formula, with a radiator, pump, and fans (2 x120 mm in this case) that are coupled into a single, closed loop. But what is different compared with many other products available on the market? The looks? Yes, the design of the pump certainly stands out. The built-in double windowpanes and the 16.7M true-colour lighting system provide a perfect display of aesthetic illumination.

Read full article @ The Guru of 3D

GeForce RTX on Your Laptop? What Form Will That Take and When?

By now every self-respecting PC enthusiast and gamer will be aware of Nvidia’s new GeForce RTX 20 series graphics cards, in the RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080 and RTX 2070. It won’t be long before we’ll get performance numbers for these cards, too, which is exciting. But before these GPUs hit the desktop, I thought it would be an interesting thought experiment to discuss what the mobile line-up of these might look like.

It’s a certainty that Nvidia will bring at least some of these GPUs to gaming laptops after the desktop launch, and a few tidbits we’ve heard from industry sources suggest it’ll be around November when we hear about GeForce 20 GPUs for laptops. That’s about a month after the release of the RTX 2070, which makes sense considering with the 10 series, laptop parts were announced about 2 months after the GTX 1070.

Read full article @ TechSpot

Gigabyte UD PRO 512GB Solid State Drive Review

With the release of Gigabyte’s UD PRO line of SATA SSDs, Gigabyte is moving towards being a one-stop shop for everything PC, sans CPU. Gigabytes line of SSDs is aimed at the masses as they are inexpensive. The UD Pro line comes in both 256 GB and 512 GB flavors. They offer SATA III speeds and utilize Toshiba’s 3D NAND. Gigabyte boasts a 200 terabyte total write capacity and 1.8 million hours of use all wrapped up in a 3-year warranty.

Read full article @ Modders-Inc

Intel Core i7-8086K Anniversary Limited Edition, 5 GHz, 6 Core, 12 Thread Processor Review

40 years ago, Intel released their iconic and one of the most successful line of x86 processors known as the 8086. The processor was the first one of the first CPUs to feature a 16-bit design along with a 5 MHz clock speed, based on a 3 µm process node. Fast forward to 2018, Intel is celebrating the anniversary of their commercially successful 8086 processor by releasing the anniversary edition, Core i7-8086K processor.

Part of the Intel Coffee Lake-S family which launched last year, the 8th generation Core i7-8086K is based on the 14nm++ process node. It features 6 cores and is the fastest commercially available 6 core processor in the market. Advancements in technology and architecture have allowed Intel to reach clock speeds of 5 GHz on their latest processor.

Read full article @ Wccftech

QR Codes Explained

Created in 1994 by Toyota subsidiary 'Denso Wave' to quickly track vehicles and parts through the company's automotive manufacturing process, QR codes are used more commonly today for logging into websites or Wi-Fi networks, sharing contact information, making mobile payments or storing data for plane and train tickets on your phone.

QR codes (short for Quick Response codes) were internationally standardized in 2000 and mobile phone users in Japan had already widely adopted the technology by 2002. Although Denso Wave still holds patents over the technology, QR codes are free for anyone to use without a license fee as long as the intellectual property is being used within the defined ISO/JIS standards.

Read full article @ TechSpot

VMware Workstation 14 - Expansive and expensive

Dear guests, RSV ... virtualization. You may like this review of VMware Workstation 14, a powerful, cross-platform virtualization product, tested on KDE neon with Ubuntu guest operating system, covering installation, configuration settings, virtual machine import, 3D acceleration, VMware Tools, performance, other features, and more. Have fun.

Read full article @ Dedoimedo